Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Olive Loaf

Black and green olives from Aragon, in the northeast Spain

Which electric appliance you can't live without? No light, candles sound romantic; no water-heater, it's ok too as we went through for 2 months without it (thanks for the stringent safety regulation that took us such a long time to settle it). But no refrigerator, I can't as I won't be able to make bread... I think I've just heard you saying 'pardon me'.

Yes, I need my fridge to proof my dough.

First I learnt about it from one of the Scandinavian pastry/bread books written by BeatricOjakangas (a professional baker, American of Finnish descent). She presented a collection of recipes done by refrigerating the dough overnight, and I tried them all, all fantastic, and more importantly, such method perfectly fits in my schedule. Come to think of it, the breads I like to make usually require 3 proofing, so every 2 hours or so I have to get back to the dough; that means a half day being stuck around the house. The experience of bread making should bring along a joyous anticipation but not that 'when-I-can-finally-get-it-over' frustration. So now, what I am doing, before bed I finish kneading the dough, then let it rise in fridge overnight. Next morning I do the shaping and let it finish the last rising. By the time I finish brushing my teeth and taking shower, the dough is ready to go to hot oven. The rest of my day remains undisturbed, except getting more phone calls from friends and family who want to join me this lunch :)

It is the first bread recipe I created. Taking reference from Basic Pizza Dough (see it at the side bar), I made the starter first, and aimed for a very moist dough. I am very happy with the end result, the interior is opalescent, delicate and pretty porous. If ask me what I want to change next time, maybe reduce the yeast a little bit, just to see if the bread still comes out the same.

For the choice of olives, black olive is definitely better than the green one in this loaf. Pitted them if desire, but mine aren't since they don't bother me, what I really care is their wonderful flavor.

For the starter: Combine water, flour, yeast and sugar together, cover and let it proof for 1 hour at 25C room temperature. The starter should look bubbly, and almost double its original volume

To make the dough: Combine the starter, semolina, flour and salt, knead until the dough is elastic and smooth. The dough should feel wet, but not sticky. Grease a large bowl and plastic wrap, place the dough in, cover, let it rise in the fridge overnight.

Next morning bring the dough back to room temperature. Knead briefly, and divide it into three portions.

Lightly flour the work table, roll each dough to 25 x 15 cm retangle. Generously brush extra virgin olive oil all over but leave one long end (so that it can seal easily), evenly distribute 1/3 portion of olives, roll up the long side, pinch the end, carefully transfer it on a baking tray, brush more olive oil on top. Repeat the same procedure with the other two doughs. Cover with plastic wrap, let them rise at 25C room temperature for about an hour. They should puff up their volume close to double.

Set oven to 250C, pre-heat for 30 minutes

Bake the loaf at 250C for the first 5 minutes, then lower to 220 for another 20 - 25 minutes. Check the doness.

21 comments:

Olive bread is one of my all time favorites. One time when we rented an apartment in Venice, we would walk around the corner every morning to the bakery, buy some olive rolls, then go a few doors farther down to the cheese shop to get some mild taleggio cheese to slice on top of the warm rolls. It was absolutely the best breakfast ever.

I've been using your basic pizza dough recipe for bread making a lot recently. It's fantastic!I often make up a batch of the dough on the weekend, and then we have a couple of pizzas, and then the dough gets left in the fridge for a few days, and when I eventually get round to it, I've made some lovely loaves out of it, usually sprinkled with sesame seeds, poppy seeds and a few black onion seeds too. (One can never have too many seeds in my opinion). I've definitely noticed that the flavour gets better the longer the dough has sat in the fridge. And I'm so grateful to you for the wonderful recipe - it's much the best pizza dough recipe I've come across.

Here in Oslo a few brilliant French and Danish bakers opened a small bakery ...that was in the late 90s and now its one of the most popular bakeries in the city...people travel far to taste their walnut bread, sourdough bread and Danish rye bread...its been a long time since I tasted the bread ,since being diagnosed with coeliaci, but I have a distinct memory of the still warm bread smothered with fresh butter just melting on my tongue...

I have the feeling your olive bread is something of the same...salty? Just a tiny bowl of olive oil and sea salt and mmmmmmm

I'm just curious, how would this recipe work with a bread maker? I am terrible making bread by hand which is why I have a bread maker, as I dearly love home made bread but just cannot for the life of me get it to turn out right, ever no matter what I do. Anyway, just wondering if I could use it the same way, just pop it into a bread maker and set it to cook as I would a standard loaf of white bread - which is what I do to make herb bread.

kitten, thank you for the comment. Sorry that I can't help your question because I never own a bread machine. You know what, please scroll up this comment colume you'll find "mykitcheninhalfcups" (her name is Tanna), this blogger is a terrific bread baker! And I've seen her using bread machine to produce excellent different breads and rolls. Maybe try to ask her? Just a suggestion.

I am absolutely TERRIBLE at making bread...for some reason I just cannot get the kneading part right, therefore I tend to use my breadmaker for it. Do you think I can use this same recipe in my breadmaker? I'd love to know if I can..help, I'm bread challenged!

Hi kitten, thanks for the visit :)I never own a bread machine so I can't give you any advise on how and what adjustments should be made, although the bread definitely can be done by machine. Good luck and have fun :D